Blackbird
by Harlequin Marionette
Summary: Ace is a peculiar seven-year-old girl. Little Ace Black has been lobotomized by her murdering stepfather. But she still has her mind, even if she's incapable of using her body. Ace can do extraordinary things. Things that scare people. Things that can kill with a glance.
1. Some of Them Want to Abuse You

**She didn't know what they wanted…**

**She didn't know why she was here…**

**She didn't even know who she was.**

**But that's in the past**

**She's a legend in the making.**

**Ace. **

She could feel the icy stares of men in white coats. Men with a look of smugness and accomplishment. Men that Ace hated. She couldn't move. She couldn't feel. Her whole body was numb; and Ace hated it. Her blue eyes drifted around the room. The white lights blinded her, and Ace could barely hear them. There were few words she could understand.

"… _Ace… Lobotomy…" _

Ace, of course, didn't even know her name. She had been a recent lobotomized inmate at Watergate Asylum for the Criminally Insane and Instable. Her eyes were blurry and unfocused, and Ace didn't know what to do.

She was scared.

She was scared of these men in white coats poking her and prodding her like a diseased animal.

Ace's wrists and ankles were unbound from the heavy chains that held her hostage, but she didn't know how to get up. You see, Ace's mind was in disrepair. She didn't know who she was. Where she was. Why she was. A voice filled the room. It was a commanding, manic voice. A voice Ace knew well. She didn't know what to do; not like she could do much of anything. She was as good as dead. Ace was a seven-year-old girl with powers. Powers that had been ripped away from her violently with a needle through her eye.

Ace's wispy white hair fell into her eyes, but Ace couldn't move. A man in a heavy black coat and red bloodstained slacks entered the room. He had scars on his face. Fresh scars that had been caused by something a little girl could get a hold of. A knife, a fork, even a shard of glass. His face still had blood on it, and Ace could see that she knew this man. She racked what was left of her brain for it, but she couldn't put a finger on it.

This man's name is Dr. Leonard Black, Ace's stepfather. The now harmless Ace Black caused the scars across his eye. This man had poisoned the late Mrs. Deirdre Black, and he'd shot Ace's sister to death in hopes of inheriting a large fortune of $4 million dollars from his now dead wife. But he'd been given nothing. Everything was left to Ace and her sister Trinity. Trinity, a four year old girl, was now dead too, and Ace's mind had been damaged beyond repair.

"You're sure you did it right?"  
"Yes, Mr. Black. She's as harmless as a droned kitten. I'm… sorry about your eye."

Ace frowned. A permanent grimace was on her porcelain face from that night.

Ace was half dragged out the door, not willing to give a fight. Ace was led into a small black car and she heard a click of a seat belt. It was hers.

Ace Black is a seven-year-old lobotomy patient.

But that's only her seventh year.


	2. Some of Them Want to Be Abused

Ace's stepfather silently drove them to the grand house near the Blue Phantom's Lake in Broken, Arrow, California. This is where Ace and her family lives. Well, her family used to live here. Now all she has is the man who ripped her life from her hands in an instant of gunfire and blood.

Ace's stepfather helped her out of the car. "I hope you're happy." He growled. "Look what you did to me." He motioned to his face. The dried blood was hardening on his wrinkling face. Ace couldn't respond. She didn't even remember who he was for a second, but it came back to her in a blurry memory of screaming and pain. He was the man she hated for her whole life. She threw her whole being into despising him.

The little girl was helped out of the car roughly. He didn't care for her, he wanted her gone. He wanted the money. Young Ace's blue eyes moved lightly around the house. It was old, but huge and pretty. The wooden floors creaked under her polished black shoes and Ace was led into her bedroom, up a staircase of spiraling wooden stairs that led up to a pretty yellow room.

The sunlight wafted into the room both eerily and beautifully. Ace was led to the bed, where she crookedly sat down. Ace Black was left alone in the room, alone with nothing but her partial thoughts and a head full of memories that were broken and in disrepair. Toys were scattered about the room. Someone had lived here once. That someone was Ace, but she hadn't truly lived, hiding the man who pretended to love her. She stayed locked in her yellow room, playing with her toys.

Imaginary friends danced with her until the sun came up. Sun fairies played on the rays of light until they too died away and the black of night overcame Ace's room. The dim glow of the waning moon filled the room, and Ace was left alone. She'd always been alone, she realized.

Ace's memory came back to her in bits and pieces as she repaired her mind by herself. She remembered the screams of her sister when she'd been killed. She remembered when she'd been told her mother was dead. She remembered her sister's optimistic smile that lit up a room. A smile you'd only come upon maybe three times in a lifetime. Little Ace was left alone in that dismal and decaying room by herself.

She'd ponder on memories and play in the corners of her mind, losing herself within herself for hours and days at a time. When Ace would come out of her fazes, she might find the willpower to stand. She'd be pushed down again as fragile as a rag doll, but Ace was determined.

It was on a windy, rainy November day when Ace found her spirit. She'd come out of one of her illusions, and Ace saw things… differently. She stood, and lifted her glass-white hand. She gently lifted her hand to open the brass door handle. The little girl's face was sunken and pale. She looked older than the little seven year old she was. Ace slowly opened the creaking door, and her polished black shoes took one slow step at a time down the spiraling staircase. The house looked dim. The once beautiful flowered wallpaper was peeling and cracked from lack of care. The house looked unused and smelled of stale cigarettes and emptiness.

Ace took one step down the creaking stairs, then another. Her porcelain hand slid down the splintering wooden rail. Her icy blue eyes spoke sadness and grief, although her mouth couldn't move to speak. She stopped at the end of the stairs and looked around the main room.

A broken white couch sat rotting in the dented floor. The green paint had faded and become more beige than anything and most furniture was broken or old, even dangerous. Toys lay randomly scattered on the floor. Always-smiling jesters with their painted smiles and teddy bears with matted and unruly fur with only one eye or a patch on its arm stared at her through beaded eyes.

Ace looked at them sadly with her pale face and walked forward. She walked towards the white door, freedom beckoning to her. But that all stopped with the slam of a door and a loud voice calling her back.

"Little girl… where do you think you're going?" Yelled Ace's stepfather. "Nowhere." Said Ace in a fragile and high voice that seemed to fit her in an eerie way. He was shocked. "You can't be out here. YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ALIVE!" He yelled, and it shattered both Ace's soul and her will.

"I try to starve you out! I GODDAMNED LOBOTOMIZED YOU!" He yelled, his voice cracking. "I try to thirst you to death. How are you still here?!" He commanded, and Ace said nothing. Her white hair fell into her eyes eerily, and she turned slowly towards him, facing him.

She reached out a hand to him almost in the way someone would ask for something. Ace's stepfather collapsed.

Ace possessed a power many of us can only cower in fear of.

And it just killed a man.


	3. Where Is My Mind?

Ace left that day, one step at a time. One foot in front of the other, everywhere she went her shoes burned the grass she walked on, her gaze set the trees on fire. Her touch killed instantly. Ace didn't notice, she looked only forwards, never blinking. Her gaze never faltering, not even for a second. She left a path of destruction behind her, everything she touched shattered into a million pieces.

But it wasn't her touch that destroyed these things.

It was her mind.

You see, Ace's mind is her most powerful and dangerous asset, even though she doesn't have much left as a result of the previous lobotomy. Pieces and bits come back to her in scraps of hidden clues and messages. Ace walked all that day and all that night, the little girl with her sullen skull-like face walking through a burning forest. She walked until she came to a clearing. There was nothing left to burn. Ace had destroyed everything. Only things left were scraps of burning wood and dying grass.

She'd destroyed the whole town and didn't know it, because she never looked back, but Ace turned slowly, seeing the trail of corpses charred and blackened that she'd left behind her. One little boy with a half-burned face looked at her through glassy eyes wet with tears. He stood still for a minute longingly, then turned and ran.

Only then did it occur to Ace that it was her who had done that to the little boy. She'd unknowingly ripped his family away from him. She'd killed over 200 people in a course of 12 hours. She was the only one left, besides that little boy who'd probably die of the smoke any minute.

But Ace didn't feel the heat and none of the smoke entered her lungs, because Ace controlled the fire. She looked back at the corpses and the fire died down. Ace just looked away emotionlessly and continued walking, but this time no flame followed her. No sign she'd ever been there.

Ace was gone by the rise of the next sun. She is powerful. She is dangerous. And this little seven-year-old is the most powerful girl in the entire world. She not only was a mass murderer in her childhood, but she didn't care. She had no emotion left. A needle had sucked it all out of her.

The next two years went by slowly for Ace. She built up her empire in that spot, creating stone and brick with her mind, and Ace became the empress of a land no one knew existed.

The little girl ruled in a black castle in a land full of death and disease, but she never moved, never smiled. She sat on her high golden throne for days without blinking. Sometimes she'd forget to breathe for a moment or two.

She mad soldiers out of wood and stone purely with her mind with painted smiles like her toys and bears. An army of forgotten dreams and long lost memories guarded her. She had a land that had been ravaged by death and despair that thrived on her sorrow. Ace wore a crown of invisible love that never existed, forged of the tears of herself that she could never shed.

Little Ace lived in an empty mansion that she filled with imaginary footsteps running through the halls and fake voices asking her to play, but she couldn't or wouldn't ever move. The little girl stayed on her throne of lost life for as long her childhood allowed, her skin had grown so pale her veins were visible through her glass figure. The girl had become a living doll, That permanent frown on her face haunted the eerie corridors lit by torches that never went out.

Ace lived her childhood sitting on a broken throne in an empty castle waiting for something that would never come. Maybe she was waiting for her mother or her sister. Maybe she was waiting to be taken by the swift hands of death. I suppose we'll never know, but the little girl they called Ace sat two years on that throne, now she's eleven.

And Ace's life spiraled even more out of control after her eleventh year.


	4. Everybody's Looking for Something

On the eleventh anniversary of Ace's birth, the girl was practically just a heartbeat in a pile of bones. She was still alive, if you could say she was living. Ace stood from her throne, the first movement she'd done in years, that is, besides in her imagination, where she roamed wild and free with no limitations and everyone was alive. She stood and walked to one of the tall windows that leaked silver light into the castle. The torches cast eerie shadows onto the floor and walls, like shadow demons were frolicking on her castle's grounds.

The young girl looked at her reflection through the mirror. She was still wearing the dress she'd been in since she was a young girl, many years ago. The pale blue dress looked like something they might wear in the 1800s, but Ace looked as though she hadn't aged a day. She'd prevented herself from aging, in her mind. She would be forever young, and that made her frown bigger, if that was possible. Her icy eyes revealed her pain and longing, but that was the only thing.

The young girl walked outside of her castle. So much had changed. The corpses were gone; she was just in a field of dead grass and dead souls. Ace looked in the back of her castle. An old swing set was there, eaten by vines and moss, but when she walked towards it, they recoiled. It was a simple wooden swing with a rusty chain. Ace walked over to it and sat down on it.

She swung back and forth slowly and peacefully. Ace's hair blew back and forth in the breeze she was creating, and she pumped her legs back and forth, closing her eyes and letting the wind control her. Ace let herself stop and kicked the dirt with her black shoes, sighing softly. She heard someone approach her.

It was a woman dressed in white. She seemed inhuman, almost with an unearthly beauty to her. She had the same icy blue eyes as ace, but with long milky brown hair. "Mother." Acknowledged Ace, looking at her mother. The woman smiled and sat on the swing next to Ace's. Ace got a strange comfort that she'd never had. She felt… human. Ace's mother tenderly held out a hand to Ace, smiling with a smile that understood her. One of the smiles you meet only three times in a lifetime.

Ace took the woman's hand. "I know why you're here." Said Ace, her voice like gravel. She'd never used it much. She'd never had a reason to.

"I'm dying, aren't I, mother." Said Ace, not looking at the woman in white.

She nodded.

"I'm dying very soon, aren't I?"

She nodded again.

Ace shrugged. Maybe it would be better for this lonely little girl. This girl who never got to live her life. She spent it lost in the darkness of her imagination with no sunlight, no love, and no hope of redemption. Did Ace ever have a chance in this world to begin with? Did she ever have any hope?

Or was this fate made for her, like the cruel hands of fate sculpted her to life out this meaningless existence.

Ace spent her last moments on that swing. The last thing she saw before her eyes closed by the sweet hands of death was the forgiving face of her mother's. The woman in white picked up the frail body of Ace, carrying her away from the swing and back into her castle, where she laid the body of the lobotomized girl. She tucked her into the bed Ace had made for herself yet never used and kissed her forehead, as should have been done before for Ace.

She then left Ace to sleep peacefully in the never-ending eternity of death, allowing Ace to finally be at peace with herself and the world.

The spirit of Ace's mother returned to her body every night to bless her with sweet dreams and to caress her broken heart and sew it back together one thread at a time.


End file.
